This application claims the benefit of Korean Application No. 2001-74293, filed Nov. 27, 2001, in the Korean Industrial Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to refrigerators with a multipurpose storage chamber and a control method thereof, and more particularly, to a refrigerator having a multipurpose storage chamber in its refrigerating compartment and a control method thereof, which controls the flow of cool air to the multipurpose storage chamber.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In conventional refrigerators using an independent temperature controller (ITC), the interior of the cabinet is divided into a freezing compartment and a refrigerating compartment by a partition wall. Two doors are hinged to the cabinet at positions in the front of the two compartments, thus allowing a user to open the freezing compartment and/or the refrigerating compartment as desired. In such a refrigerator of the ITC type, an evaporator and a fan are provided at the rear portion of the cabinet at a position corresponding to each of the refrigerating and freezing compartments, thus independently supplying cool air to an associated compartment. A defrosting heater is provided at each of the two evaporators installed at the two compartments.
In the conventional refrigerators, the freezing compartment preferably stores frozen food therein, while the refrigerating compartment preferably stores cold food therein. Additional storage chambers may be provided in the refrigerating compartment. For example, a vegetable storage chamber is provided at the lower portion of the refrigerating compartment for storing vegetables and/or fruits therein.
However, the temperature of the vegetable storage chamber varies in a similar manner to a variation in the temperature of the refrigerating compartment. It is thus necessary to provide a technique of effectively storing a variety of foods in accordance with different storage characteristics of the foods. For example, some foods, such as fish, are required to be kept cold in the refrigerating compartment rather than stored in the freezing compartment, but are not suitable to be kept in the vegetable storage chamber. Therefore, in order to more effectively store such foods in the refrigerating compartment while maintaining their freshness for a desired period of time, it is necessary to provide, in the refrigerating compartment, an additional storage chamber that can reduce its temperature to a desired point within a short period of time.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a refrigerator with a multipurpose storage chamber and a control method thereof, which controls the flow of cool air to the multipurpose storage chamber provided in the refrigerating compartment in accordance with different storage characteristics of foods stored in the multipurpose storage chamber.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
The foregoing and other objects of the present invention are achieved by providing a refrigerator, comprising: a multipurpose storage chamber provided in a refrigerating compartment; and a cool air supply device controlling a flow of cool air to the multipurpose storage chamber in accordance with a selected operational mode.
The foregoing and other objects of the present invention are also achieved by providing a method of controlling a refrigerator with a multipurpose storage chamber provided in the refrigerating compartment and a cool air supply device controlling the flow of cool air to the multipurpose storage chamber, comprising: determining an operational mode selected by a user; and selectively controlling the flow of cool air to the multipurpose storage chamber or the refrigerating compartment by an operation of the cool air control device in accordance with a selected operational mode, thus controlling the temperature of the multipurpose storage chamber.